It's Always Something

Friday, February 13, 2015

February 14th is different for me. Years ago, I
was married on this day. Two months prior, I nearly bled to death. As life
drained out of me and my skin color blended with the white sheets in the
emergency room (you can’t believe it unless you've seen it), I received a
proposal of marriage. It was meant to give me the will to live. It wasn't
necessary. I was in good medical hands and had no desire to go anywhere. My
life was my three kids and my desire for them to have a typical family. The
five of us were coming to that but we had put off making a legal commitment. Three
kids as part of my bargain didn't seem to represent a fair prospect for him.

***************

They normally don’t allow people in the ER beyond the
waiting room but he just walked in after locating me in the warren of swinging doors
and bright lights. That was the kind of man he was. No was not in his acceptable inventory of responses. Nobody stopped him. I saw his face among
those who were tending to me; I accepted him to have found me. He later said he
counted 17 people in that room, not including the two of us. I remember, even
now, racing to the OR watching the ceiling tiles whiz by overhead, some pieces missing with wires and pipes exposed, like in a
movie. I woke hours later in the ICU and watched flakes of snow whirling outside
the foggy window. A nurse told me he’d just left; it was 5 a.m. and I should
let him get some sleep. She phoned him and he was standing next to me the next time I opened
my eyes. The weather was torturous. It was 12 degrees and he’d gone home and checked
the wrapped pipes, turned around and came back. He brought my hairbrush. He was
that kind of man.

***************

Over the years, we had a grand party every Valentine’s Day. We
invited everyone we knew and they all came. A bartender was hired; glasses were rented; food was cooked for days. It was a festive gala, a chance for people to dress up and make merry in what
was usually the dullest, grayest time of year. Photos have been lost; tossed
out, I suspect, by a bitter child. But that’s another story.

Malcolm Gladwell writes in The Tipping Point about the process of memory in his chapter about The Power of Content. [Transactive memory is part of what intimacy
means and when a unit is broken up, as it is in divorce, depression develops
due to the] loss of [] external memory systems.

And so… my recollection is only half of what it should be. I
could make a pie chart of where collections of memorable events exist. I've
lost much; I've way too many living ghosts.

***************

I hate hospitals. The weeks and months of smelling
those odors, hearing those sounds. I became far too familiar with routines,
schedules and movements. I was often mistaken for a doctor or nurse, even
without a uniform.

We came to refer to it as the drive-by germ. It hit our
house in late January, just as we were planning the next Valentine party.

I slept in his ICU room for nearly a month. They moved him
to a standard room and I had to sleep in a chair. I couldn't leave. He lost his
ears, his toes, half his fingers. He was on breathing machines at 100%
for too damn long. He lost his mind, his memory, the things we shared together,
the things we cherished, the moments, the harmony, the sweet accord that made
us whole.

***************

I thought I’d gotten over him. Last year a phone call came
in the night and we rushed to that place I hate…the hospital. It was eleven years since I'd seen him. You get over a person in that amount of time, right? Especially
if that person is not even recognizable as whom he was to you, when he was a complete,
sane person?

I honestly didn't think he’d make it through the night. There
was blood everywhere, a huge gash in his forehead, broken bones on both sides
on his body, his back. Intubated; those familiar tubes trailing from his nose
and mouth, the pumping of air into lungs that resist each thrust. He’d been hit
by a pizza delivery car; stepped off a curb in his usual oblivion and BAM! Here we were again.

***************

“He has nine lives,” we joked. It was funny. Sort of. He’s
escaped death more than anyone I know, twice as a child in horrible accidents. I
visited him three times again after that, twice in the ICU, where they had him stabilized;
then again in a regular room when he was awake and aware. He didn't cling to my
hand like he had when he didn't really realize who I was. He dismissed us all with
the wave of his deformed, damaged hands. I closed the door.

***************

Christmas is difficult. We had such a multitude of traditions
and so much fun; it’s never been the same. I've chosen to be in Mexico for the
holidays, where the culture captures me and I don’t dwell on how our typical family completely fell apart, shattered
in so many pieces, no pot of glue could put it together again.

Valentine’s Day, however, follows me wherever I go. Those many years ago, my first one without him... friends, who took pity, invited me to
dinner. A mistake. After they talked about him through the entire meal, I excused
myself to go back to the hospital, sit next to him and listen to the wheezes
and beeps, the monitors and machines that were keeping him alive. I woke at
dawn, drove home and fell back to sleep curled in a ball. Those things I remember.

When he came out of the coma, woke and spoke, he
recognized no one and thought I was someone named Sheila. Slowly he began to
come back to us but he never really reached that point where we knew him. His transactive memory was
gone. It was the death of our intimacy.

***************

My life has gone on. I've had magic and wondrous times. I've
even had love again, which was something I doubted would ever revisit me in
this mortal existence. I've been lucky and there are few regrets. Valentine’s
Day though… it’s a burden I shoulder.

Thanks for reading.

Heart in Her Hand painting of me by Michael Hale (At the time of his illness, a vaccination was being developed for meningitis, which is highly recommended for teenagers, who are more susceptible than younger children. Too late for Breeze, who lost his spleen as a young boy in one of the aforementioned accidents. Had it been only a couple years later, he would have been eligible and chances are we would still be making memories.)

Tuesday, July 29, 2014

So many mother's babies have been lost in recent weeks, the result of horrifying warring. I was compelled to write a poem at the time of the deaths of three innocent boys, hitching a ride home from school. This piece was part of a challenge from Robert Lee Brewer, Writer's Digest poetry editor. Since it was entered in a poetry contest, I wasn't able to post it to my site but here it is, in its entirety, in memory of Eyal Yifrach, 19, Naftali Frenkel, 16 and Gilad Shaar, 16 and all the children and their families, lost in senseless battle, West of Jordan.

Using the form of a Golden Shovel poem, the writer must take another poem and using each word in that line or poem as an end word of their own piece. Once completed, the original poem is revealed by reading the final words of each line of the new creation. I used the Walt Whitman poem LOOK DOWN, FAIR MOON, which was an homage to young men killed during the American Civil War. According to one analysis [certain battles would drag on for many days at a time. As a result of this, oftentimes corpses had to be left where they fell on the battle field due to a lack of ability to go back and pick them up. The author of this analysis believes that this poem is based upon Whitman's plea for the moon to look down on such battlefields and clean and purify the bodies of the wounded.]

PLEASE, LOOK DOWN, FAIR MOON

Let’s say you don’t like the way these boys dress or look

Or perhaps you, helplessly, down

To your own calcified beliefs, have trouble being fair

In a world, under the same moon.

Maybe you see our children differently and

You’re not interested in how we bathe

These bloody issues, be they Israeli or Palestinian in this

Complicated and hard to be neutral scene.

Imagine the tears of three mothers and how they did pour

With aunts, grandmothers, friends and softly

Spoken young girls, all falling down

On knees with incalculable sorrow in the night’s

Mourning, a glow of love and grief like a dimmed nimbus

Like nothing you have ever, ever known, the floods

Of untold loss, without relying on

Memories of sweet babyish faces

That now, after sharing ten silent bullets, are left ghastly,

Found in an open area close to Hebron, swollen,

Left in a field in the West Bank; cheeks, hands, lips purple

These mother’s babies missing. Two. Weeks. Don’t tell me it’s not on

Your mind what had to be acknowledged in the

Cold bright room where they identify the dead;

Does it matter to what god they prayed? on

What day of the week? or the food on their

Breakfast plate? … now that they lay on stiffened backs,

What if it was your boy who died there with

His school friends, last seen at the hitchhiking point in Gush Etzion with their

Monday, June 30, 2014

First and foremost, my genuine THANKS to Nancy Coats Posey
for inviting me to join this Blog Tour.

A word about Nancy:

Nancy is a lot like me, having so many interests, she needs
to be twins and even some days, triplets. Nancy is an Alabama native who
has lived in North Carolina since 1995, an English instructor, poetess, wife,
mother, and grandmother, a photographer, and a perpetual beginner mandolin
player. She has a couple blogs she floats in and out of for poetry, general
information, and art projects. Her regular blog "Discriminating
Reader" is devoted to her lifelong love of books. She reviews her recent
(and excessive) reading and sometimes just chats about books and reading in
general. Check her out at whenthepenbleeds,blogspot You’ll
be happy you did.

The tour is comprised of questions starting with

1. What am I currently
working on?

I HAD A BOY, my latest novel about Robin Dockery, a pregnant
teenage runaway in Los Angeles, during the music explosion of the ‘60’s and
‘70’s. Robin gives her baby up for adoption but gets him back when she marries
a handsome British lad so he can get his Green Card and stay in the USA with
his boy friend, the son of a Venezuelan diplomat.

I completed writing BOY last year and had some interest,
mainly from Anderson Literary in NY, who send me the kindest, most informative
rejection letter a person could ever hope to receive.

BOY is a unique story because it is mine… I lived it and
felt all the pain and joy that’s transferred onto the pages. The music scene in
LA was a magical one and music really was everywhere. I take great
liberties with facts and plot twists, giving cameos to the quick and the dead.

As she moves up and down the coast, over a couple decades,
between Southern California and a small town in rural Washington, Robin is
continually torn between her self-made family and the gnarly nest of her
religious and mildly demented mother, her browbeaten father and redneck
siblings with whom she has never been able to relate. I’m happy to report these
characters are not based on my own personal family.

Robin’s story is important because she represents a
generation of females whose choices were limited. Birth control was not quite
impossible to get, but it was a challenge. Pharmacists kept condoms, (which
were known by the objectionable name rubbers) behind counters so
they had to be asked for. If a girl purchased a condom, she was considered
nothing less than a slut and usually underwent interrogation by some
white-coated pervert. Boys inquiring about prophylactics were shamed with
stupid questions like “What size? You want extra large or extra small?” by the
chuckling jokesters. Roe v. Wade was on the horizon, but aborting a
pregnancy was way too expensive for the majority, whether they could have the
procedure legally or not. I've knew girls who found surgical solutions. They
went through horror and humiliation. Some never fully recovered.

So… what happened to Robin and others like her, when their
children realized they could've had a different life with someone else, someone not related to them? They might have grown up in a fantasy family, chosen and adopted. or maybe with that completely uninterested father.

What about the mothers who didn't know who was the father of
their baby? That was more common than most want to admit. Or those who barely
knew him; their sperm donor, as we have semi-fondly referred to
those guys who showed up for maybe a night or two, then disappeared down the road, taking responsibility and their last name with them.

How does it feel to have men come back into a mom’s life,
who previously insisted she illegally abort her baby, but now want to play the
role of father, grandfather, cuddly best friend and confidante?

My goal with BOY, at this point, is to re-edit… once more,
and make it just a bit rawer than the original. Ms. Anderson, the literary
agent, gave me some recommendations that I do believe it would be wise to
pursue.

2. How does my work differ from others of its
genre?

I HAD A BOY and my previous novel SING, AND DON’T CRY are
about my personal adventures, turned upside down with fictionalization. Not
that it hasn't been done before, but no one has ever told my story.

I weave a certain amount of lessons in my tales,
without being moralistic. John Irving wrote about the morality of abortion
without ever being political or didactic. The same could be said about Mark
Twain and racism; he didn't beat you over the head with it. Stephen
King told stories about the death penalty and the mortification of prison
life but it wasn't his intention to make his reader be shamed or feel
guilty. Good teachers and I aim to emulate them.

3. Why do I write/create what I do?

4. How does your writing/creating process
work?

I say this with a grand heaving sigh: I don’t have a choice
in the matter. Words flow out of me, and like many artists, I wonder whom I’m
channeling. I've stories to tell and if I try to do it through spoken word, I’m
likely to be whacked over the head with a 2X4 until I shut up. So writing seems
like a healthier alternative. More than once I've been told “you should write a
book.” It seems like the things that have happened to me over the course of six
decades are not your ordinary life. Everyone has a story to tell. My position
is that some of them really neeeed to be shared. Point is, I know I
like to read a good book and my aim is to give others the same
pleasure.

I work best in the mornings, which is odd, since I always
used to consider myself a night owl. I’m not; I just have a hard time getting
out of bed in the mornings on some days.

I like background music when I’m writing and if I want to
get super inspired, I put CD’s on like soundtracks from Chocolat, The
Mission or Amélie.

I can write in chaos or tranquility. There are boxes in
drawers and closets with reams that attest to the fact. I possess notes written
in darkened hallways, adjacent to deathbeds; bright glaring hospital rooms
where my own personal cot was tucked in the corner of the patient room; boats
pitching on the open sea leaving no resemblance of proper penmanship; humid
jungles where cicadas screamed so loud, writing was more conducive than talking.

I've trained to perform in a circus; single-handedly
midwived a baby into the world, with no training; marched, sat and sang for
equal and civil rights; worked with famous people in theater summer stock and
held lead and minor roles in plays and musicals; sang in a rock band; moved to
a foreign country where I had to teach myself the language and then owned and
ran, not one, but two businesses;. That’s just the tip of my literary
iceberg.

I end my blogs by saying “Thanks for reading” and what I mean
by that is thank you for reading my blog; thank you for reading and buying
books from first and second hand stores; thank you for reading poetry, mine and
everyone else’s; thank you for reading newspapers and the internet; thank you
for reading to your children; thank you for reading billboards; thank you for
reading graffiti (because it's often someone’s creation meant to be shared);
thank you for reading your emails; thank you for reading recipes; thank you for
reading report cards and progress reports; thank you for reading your homework;
thank you for reading famous authors and not so famous authors; thank
your for reading directions, the manual, the map and instructions; thank you
for reading cereal boxes; thank you for reading The Magna Carta, The Constitution,
the Bible, the Koran and the Talmud; thank you for reading... you know… Thank
You for Reading.

Friday, June 6, 2014

Music was a huge influence in my parents’ lives. They
danced; they sang. My mother and her brother participated in Dancethons in
California, when they both lived there, he in the military in Wilmington and
she building stealth gliders.

Jo Stafford’s I’ll Be Seeing You, along with every other
young American in love during the war, was my parents’ song. My dad was too old
for the service (b 1905) but he made good money tending bar and that’s how he met
my mother. When she left California with a broken heart, she never intended to
be swept off her feet by a handsome bartender in Seattle, sixteen years her
senior. They were married three weeks after meeting; a marriage that lasted 42
years.

They loved to dance and I have fond memories of singing hits
of the 40’s with extended family, gathered around the piano while mom tickled
the ivories. I think a lot of people left a hunk of their heart in that decade.
They lost so much.

Soldiers and sailors were everywhere. Seattle was a port and
young men, some who lied about their age to enlist, were shipping out at Bremerton.

There were many restaurants and clubs in Seattle, including the
Black and Tan (12th and Jackson), where my mom told me the jazz was
incredible, the crowd very dark-skinned and the atmosphere never boring. She
said famous people, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Lionel Hampton played there
and toured up and down the coast. The Town Ranch (at 8th and Pine)
was one of their favorite spots and they frequented John Q Public, which is
where this photo was taken in the spring of 1944. Pictured with my parents are three
young boys who were shipping out the following day. The child on the left
called himself Johnny Angel. My mom said he couldn’t have been over 16, maybe younger.

When I think of D-Day, I always picture these three sailors,
getting pickled with my parents the night before they boarded ship to go win a
war. Normandy was a slaughter, as we know. There was an estimate of 4,500
allied soldiers who died that day; 10,000 more casualties.

Wednesday, June 4, 2014

I don't get it. I know SEVERAL small business owners who pay
their employees a STARTING wage of $15. I'm also quite sure the owner of
Cupcake Royale is far from personal financial pain, as was referred to in a
friend’s Facebook thread.

What a lot of whining! Why can't large corps do as Costco,
known for paying their employees above
the minimum in all states and countries they do business? I worked the holiday season this last year at
Nordstrom for a jaw-dropping $9.25/hr. I did okay for the weeks surrounding
Christmas, which could have made it worth my while, but the bookend paychecks I received resembled nothing close to a living wage. That ain’t right.

Food servers currently earn $9.32/hr and you say "oh,
but they get TIPS, too…" Hah! I have many personal friends who are in this
business. Most have two jobs. And it’s
still a struggle.

I’m an apartment manager who’s pressured by upper management
to raise rents whenever we have vacancies; ergo there are certain people living in our building. We used to call them yuppies; young upwardly mobile... a privileged generation. They are shutting out those who
have not been able to afford a college degree, which seems to be the earmark for
getting a livable wage. I know. I've done the job hunt in the past five years and it’s scary. I’m lucky to have some of the resources I do
and the ability to capitalize on them or I would have gone down with this
economic ship a long time ago.

Herman Cain, past presidential GOP hopeful, didn't quite
come out to abolish the minimum wage
but his claim that it’s the best starting place for those seeking a first job
fell on ears of those with a high school education and no hope of even
attending a community college and/or being able to pay rent. Guess how Cain
made his fortune? Burger King. Godfather’s Pizza. He held executive positions in the restaurant
industry most of his career. Republicans Rick Perry, Rand and Ron Paul all have
run for office on platforms that include abolishing the federal minimum wage
and as the elder Paul famously glibly quoted “because it would help the poor people.”

There is a great disparagement between the working class of
America and those above them. We have the poor and we will always have the poor; those born in circumstances that are almost
impossible to rise above. But we also have a diminishing lower middle class,
who find it more difficult with each passing year to make ends meet. I know
people who are in miserable debt, simply because they have been forced to buy
GROCERIES with a credit card. Buying a new car? Laugh. Out. Loud. These are
people who work at more than one job and when the day is done, there is little
time for fitting in an extra class at the community college, let alone
embarking on a new education or career.

I’m really disappointed in those I know who are complaining
about things like higher menu prices. If you can afford trips to Europe, Asia,
Hawaii, Mexico, go home to the East Coast/California to visit the family; if you have
a new car don’t rely on Metro for your transportation, if you drink hard
liquor or visit local restaurants, frequent a bar/café where everybody knows
your name, shop retail don’t buy clothes at Value Village out of
necessity, never sweat your car payment verses your rent mortgage,then
maybe you should be willing to let others afford some of the same.
We aren't discussing luxuries here: this isn't about yachts, expensive
champagne, designer shoes. This is about enjoying life and not working your
fingers to the bone. Because as the song says “What do you get? Boney fingers!”
And instead of turning up your middle one to the people who actually make your
life better, give a damn.

Wednesday, April 23, 2014

Tonight I was a giver. I gave books on World Book Night. The
book I gave was WILD by Cheryl Strayed.

About Cheryl Strayed, Ursula Hegi says:
"In language that's lyrical and
haunting, Cheryl Strayed writes about bliss and loss, about the kind of grace
that startles and transforms us in ordinary moments."

I must meet Cheryl, as
I have met Wally and Anne and other amazing people, who can put words on paper
better than I, and make magic.

Giving books to people, and explaining they are free, has a
remarkable effect. At one point we were surrounded by girls, whose ages were 16
and 17 and all clamored to get a copy. How could I refuse? I made them promise
to form a book club. I should have thought to give them my business card so
they could report back.

The we of whom I
speak is my granddaughter and I. For the past three years, she has accompanied me on
World Book Night, which serves two purposes. She is willing to carry my extra
books and she is soaking up
experience. Tonight she was disappointed to the point of anger when a woman we
talked to said she had no interest in reading. My granddaughter is a good
actress and didn't let on that she was completely annoyed, however she marveled that someone could be so thick as to not realize what a gigantic world they are
missing by having absolutely no interest in books!

WILD is an embracing book that made me weep, laugh, shout,
chuckle, chortle, sob and sigh. A movie is being made starring Reese Witherspoon, which I may
or may not see. Sometimes it’s easier for me to hang with my own images.

When we had one book left to give, we walked around until we
approached a young woman at Starbucks. I opened my conversation with “the
author lost her mother when she was 22” and I was handed back words that sent a
waterfall of chills down my spine: “I lost my mom two months ago,” she said. I couldn't
retreat with my offer nor there was much left for me to say. I handed
her WILD and with my hand on her shoulder, said I was so sorry for her loss and
hoped she might find some comfort in the book.

Tuesday, February 4, 2014

Addiction is the monster that hid
under the bed, lurked in the closet. Some escaped unscathed while others were
fortunate enough merely to be scarred.

I've been surrounded by horrible
addiction in my life and can sadly vouch for the fact that money gives no
benediction to those who are leveled by their dependence.

Why some of us think we are so far above others is a mystery to me. We are all completely equal in that we are human. We are fragile as a sigh or a tear. To freely judge someone who has an exposed weakness, when we know in our personal depth, the errors of our own ways, the transgressions we have committed, the black thoughts in our hearts?My mother-in-law could have entered
treatment at any time in her life but she wasn't able to admit she was anything but
normal, even though after one drink, her lip would begin to curl like a rabid
dog and before long, she would ruin whatever was the occasion of the day. I’m
convinced that she feared what happened to her husband would also be her likely
end. Once her husband admitted he needed help and acquiesced, registering at a
high-end rehabilitation facility, a long train ride away, he died the
night before his departure. His death certificate reads “accidental death due
to alcohol and opiates in the home of a friend.” 1943. Leaving a young widow
and a tiny baby behind. His addictions began with pain killers.

I've sat with people I love and
watched them bite right through a folded towel, shaking so badly that you might
think the rattling of their very bones would kill them. Pouring Gatorade,
bottle after bottle after bottle. I listened to sounds that rarely come from a
human not giving birth, smelling the sweet stink of their sweat, poison seeping
from their pores. And them swearing they would never touch the stuff again. Two
years later, making the same vows, suffering the same agony.

Secrets and sorrow accompany
overwhelming cravings and twist people beyond friendship and fellowship. They
don't just destroy bodies and spirits and families; they also obliterate hope
and faith and prospects for immeasurable futures.

I don't judge anyone. I smoked
cigarettes for forty years, quitting for long intervals and fooling myself too
often, thinking just one, just one and I won't have
another. I'll be okay tomorrow. I haven't smoked for 5 years
and I am fully aware I've damaged my own precious cardiovascular system but I
bet you if I lit up right now, I would be back at it again. I never touched
cocaine. I had countless opportunities but I knew that even once, I could have
been a dead girl. I went to too many funerals.

My sadness is that I will never have
the chance to look forward to another Philip Seymour Hoffman movie. He was, by
far, one of the best. Ever.

I'm sorry, Philip, that for after
23 years of sobriety, something enticed you, drove you and took you from us.

Heaven's gain is surely our loss and
losing you and Pete Seeger in the same week gives me profound sadness. He was
old but should have lived forever. You were young and should have cheated
death.

About Me

When I was thirteen my English teacher advised my mother to encourage my writing. Mom avidly read everything I wrote; she was my biggest fan. My introduction to publication was Student Life Editor for my school newspaper and yearbook. Later I was a stringer for the local newspaper and eventually a travel writer and poet. My books include NOTHING GOLD, the story of how I lost my husband and got him back again, only to realize he returned as a stranger; THE SEVENTH WAVE, a novel inspired by my years in Mexico; I HAD A BOY, the story of a pregnant teenage runaway who marries a Brit so he can get a Green Card and stay in the US with his Venezuelan lover; CARLOS AT THE BROKEN ARMS, the tales of a documented Mexican immigrant who finds his legal status is sometimes less than helpful when he takes over management of his departed aunt’s apartment building. Both the building and the book are packed with unforgettable characters.
Adam Garcia is the nom de plume that I use for writing in Mexico. Adam helps me stay out from under the radar. A Googlish search will reveal a lot of interesting opinions and facts that Adam likes to share with the world.